YouTube creator sues Snap accusing its AI model training of copyright infringement

A group of YouTube creators are suing multiple tech giants for illegally capturing their videos to train AI models, and Snap has recently been added to the list of defendants. These three plaintiffs, who collectively have approximately 6.2 million subscribers, accuse Snap of using its video content to train an AI system for in app AI features such as “Imagine Lens,” which allows users to edit images through text commands.

(evan spiegel)

Previously, the plaintiff had filed a lawsuit against Nvidia, Meta and ByteDance for similar reasons.

The latest proposed class action lawsuit was submitted to the United States District Court for the Central District of California last Friday. The plaintiff specifically pointed out that Snap used a large-scale video language dataset called HD-VILA-100M and other datasets limited to academic research purposes. The plaintiff claims that in order to use the dataset for commercial purposes, Snap circumvented YouTube’s technical restrictions, terms of service, and license provisions prohibiting commercial use.

The lawsuit demands statutory compensation and applies for a permanent injunction to prevent potential infringement in the future.

This case is mainly led by the creators of the h3h3 YouTube channel with a subscription volume of 5.52 million, as well as the smaller golf channels MrShortGame Golf and Golfholics.

This is the latest case among numerous content creators suing AI model suppliers. Previously, there have been copyright disputes from publishers, writers, newspapers, user generated content platforms, artists, and other parties. This is not the first lawsuit initiated by YouTube creators. According to data from the non-profit organization Copyright Alliance, there have been over 70 copyright infringement cases against AI companies.

The progress of such lawsuits varies: in the case of Meta and Writers Group, the judge ruled in favor of tech giants; In the case between Anthropic and the author group, the AI giant chose to settle with the plaintiff and pay compensation. Currently, the majority of cases are still under active trial.

Roger Luo said：This case centers on whether the commercial use of “research-only” datasets for AI training constitutes a substantive violation of both original content copyrights and platform terms of service. It touches on the universal legal challenge in the age of generative AI: defining the boundaries of data ownership and fair use in training materials.

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